The Purloined Boy is about a lanky twelve year old named Trevor Upjohn. He was stolen by a bogeyman right out his bed when he was just a wee lad. But that’s not what makes him special. What makes him special is he knows he was stolen. More than that – he wants to go home again. His care-givers, the Guardians, won’t hear of it. Worse, the bogeymen have other plans for him – plans too awful to even mention here. Fortunately for our hero the Venerable Guild of the Sun Eaters is working to save him. Even better, a talking mouse named Zephyr comes to Trevor’s aid and promises to take him home, but with one proviso! And just in case you were wondering, purloined means stolen! Read The Purloined Boy today.

Show Notes
News:

Harlan Ellison is selling his first typewriter for the sum of 40K. We discuss his candidate explanation and relate it to Spider Robinson’s comments from the anthology BEFORE THEY WERE GIANTS.

Random House ebook sales soared in 2010, with some of their top titles selling equal number electronic editions and paper copies! Shaun then laments his lack of an ebook reader.

Orson Scott Card suffered a mild stroke on New Years Day. We also discuss his new novel, a fantasy entitled THE LOST GATE.

Feedback:

The guys discuss Lou Anders blog comment from Episode 109 regarding piracy. And, yes, our voicemail number is broken, but we’ll get a new one soon.

Thanks again, guys. Another great episode. #110? That’s amazing.
But I should correct you – the books in question weren’t pirated in advance of their publication. They were pirated at publication. We’ve had other works pirated, one or two torrents offering an illegal download showing up. But both these works were HEAVILY pirated – I’m talking a period of several weeks, from the week they were published to a few months out, where we were getting 2 to 3 Google Alerts a day pointing to different torrent sites.

Thanks, Lou, for the clarification — we were uncertain of the timing. Regardless, a bad spot to be put in. It’s unfortunate we seem to be seeing more and more horror stories of piracy crop up all over the interwebs (thanks for sharing a few — Note: The anywherebeyond post has come as a recommended read by several folks).

For those of you feeling a bit melancholy about our discussion on the financial viability of being a writer, we’ll be bringing you a couple interviews from World Fantasy that are bit more upbeat in tone and I think they will help balance things out.